[community, cow parade, cows, Derry, depth of field, diaspora, Ebrington, Enfuse, EOS 5d mk ii, focus stack, Gasyard, Hugin, Ilex, Londonderry, Maydown, NI, playtrail, public art, sculpture, shirt factory, statues, four features, >500 views]

1. 26 th April 2013 Achieved its fourth feature in the group European Everyday Life

1. 31st October 2012 view count reached 500

    Camera: EOS 5 d Mk ii     Lens: Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 L IS USM (at 277mm)

These are three of the painted cows in Derry’s Cow Parade in Ebrington Square.

Shown in order are:

1. Maydown Seniors Group’s diaspora themed cow, called Ermintrude, painted by Dr Andrea Redmond.
2. Gasyard Centre and Pilots Row Community Centre created a shirt factory themed cow, called The Shirt Factory Horn! The artists involved were Catherine Duddy and Mary Kennedy. This is one of three photographs that include this cow
3. The Playtrail’s cow representing Derry City’s past, created by John and Trisha Deery.

Cow Parade is said to be the largest participative art project in the world. Having been seen by 300m people world wide it certainly has a claim to that title! In fact there are many cow parades. The organisers provide plain white fiberglass cows – mostly in three characteristic stances – and artists and community groups in a local area come together to decorate their cow in a way that highlights a locally relevant theme.

There are twelve, or more of these cows in Ebrington Square and a few others scattered around Derry. I spent a few hours over there and will upload a few more photographs over the next week or so as I get their post-production processing completed.

History of this Image on Redbubble

1. 2nd September 2012 view count reached 200.
2. 26th Aug 2012 Was Featured for the third time by a RedBubble group. This time by the group Sculpture
3. 23rd *Aug 2012 Was Featured for the second time by a RedBubble group. This time by the group Postcard Style

1. 21st Aug 2012 view count reached 101.
2. 13th Aug 2012 Was Featured for the first time in a RedBubble group, by the group Statues and Such
3. 12th Aug 2012 Uploaded to RedBubble
4. 11th Aug 2012 Three source-images blended together to create this one.
5. 10th Aug 2012 Source Images shot in Ebrington Square

Method and techie Photographic Detail
Because of the foreshortening effect of the telephoto lens these cows look closer to each other than they really are. They are in fact spread over about 30m.

Hence the photograph has an unusually large depth of field. It was created from a “focus-stack” of three separate shots – each one with it’s focus on different cow.

The three source shots were taken with an aperture of f/14 – so they had a generous depth of field to start with. They were blended together using Hugin, which aligned the three images and then invoked Enfuse, to blend the images and achieve the apparently-huge depth of field with all three cows in sharp focus.

    Camera: EOS 5 d Mk ii     Lens: Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 L IS USM (at 277mm)     Exposure: f/14 1/250th